


Lasting Momentum

by tsuyume



Category: Naruto
Genre: Community: kakairu_fest, Explicit Language, KakaIru Month 2015, M/M, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-20
Updated: 2015-06-20
Packaged: 2018-04-05 05:26:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4167630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsuyume/pseuds/tsuyume
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Iruka finally gathers the courage to seek a life partner of his own.</p><p>Written for the <a href="http://kakairu-fest.livejournal.com/144734.html">KakaIru Month 2015</a>, Prompt for Day 20: <i>If you thought that was all I could give you, then you've never been in love.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Lasting Momentum

**Author's Note:**

> Beware of spoilers for the end of the manga, movies, novels and new manga series, basically _everything_. Also, possibly bad grammar. Un-betaed.

They had kept passing each other while rotating around the village, like planets intertwined in their orbits around the sun.  
  
They were vague acquaintances, sure, but it had taken Naruto for them to begin gravitating together. Naruto had that effect on people. Nevertheless, they had kept a cursory distance, becoming acquaintances for sure but not quite friends.  
  
But it spoke for their degree of steady building companionship that even their disagreement over the chuunin exams only put a small bump into their mutual feelings of respect and appreciation.... If anything, this show of honesty had opened up something invisible between them, their conversations afterwards becoming increasingly deeper and franker.  
  
They kept up their regular meetings at Ichiraku or casual strolls through the village to share their thoughts about Naruto's progress, but frequently also involving village politics and missions.  
  
  


* * *

 

  
  
Iruka couldn't help to notice the increase in their seemingly accidental bumpings into each other.  
  
_Huh_ , he thought. At the next opportunity, when they were slowly walking back together from a shared dinner at Ichiraku, he finally mustered the courage to ask.  
  
"Do you want to come over for drinks?" He got out calmly, his heart threatening to burst out of his ripcage. After all, propositioning the most feared jounin in the middle of the village, however friendly they had gotten, was probably the most daring thing Iruka had ever pulled off.  
  
Kakashi continued to hold his gaze, not moving his face.  
  
"Yes", he said, his eye then crinkling.  
  
Iruka breathed a sign of relief, before his heartbeat picked up again with a vengeance.

 

* * *

 

  
  
Kakashi was surprisingly - or not _this_ surprisingly if Iruka thought about it - a tasteful and cultivated drinker.  
  
Iruka had brought out his best sake set, a memento from his parents, and found he was glad Kakashi seemed to appreciate it. They shared a single, small bottle of exquisite sake and their thoughts on topics ranging from the mundane to the deeper issues of their life as shinobi.  
  
Kakashi kept his mask on while drinking and Iruka didn't comment on it. Even if he couldn't help but notice and wonder what that was supposed to say about their level of familiarity with each other.  
  
Their lively discussion soon broke down to a comfortable silence simmering between them. Iruka was far from being drunk but he couldn't stop breaking out in mischievous smiles everytime their eyes met and Kakashi in turn kept glancing at him intently, before seemingly casually moving his gaze away.  
  
It was Iruka who finally caved.  
  
"Do you.. do you want to take this somewhere else?"  
  
Kakashi didn't move a single muscle in his face.  
  
"Yes", he said calmly.  
  


* * *

 

  
  
Iruka didn't get to see the face underneath the mask after all, but he got plenty else to see. And feel.  
  
He never would have thought that Kakashi would be so clingy during sex. Not that he minded. Quite the opposite, but then again it made him wonder how much he actually knew about the other man and how many of those assumptions might be wrong.  
  
Underneath the underneath, indeed, although currently it was more like inside the inside, if the position of Kakashi's cock slamming into his ass was anything to go by. Iruka gave up thinking at the precise moment Kakashi finally hit his prostrate.  
  
Afterwards, when they lay quiet, close to each other, casually touching in various places, on Iruka's wide but single bed, Iruka resolutely decided if anything, he deserved honesty.  
  
"Will this be a recurring thing?" He asked.  
  
Kakashi chuckled.  
  
"Yes", he said, as if Iruka had just asked the silliest thing.  
  


* * *

 

  
  
Iruka had thought their relationship would steadily build momentum, at least after the deep incursor that had been the attack during the chuunin exams, Sandaime's death and Sasuke's defection. He had thought, if they went through something like that, they would come out stronger together. And they did.  
  
But it didn't go anywhere from there, always teetering on the edge of becoming something more meaningful, steadier, permanent.  
  
Partly, their life as shinobi was to blame. Iruka wasn't naive and while he didn't go out on missions regularly anymore he surely understood what duty meant to shinobi, to Kakashi. But it wasn't just the missions, there were many things Kakashi still kept to himself. His face. His past. His feelings.  
  
When Iruka tried to ask him about it during one of the incredibly rare occassions Kakashi would just lounge around in his apartment, reading his book, it made him feel incredibly foolish and intrusive.  
  
"So... umm... this is sudden, but I just came across some book my mother gave me. Do you have anything from yours?"  
  
"Yes", Kakashi said nonchalantly, keeping his eyes trained on his book. His posture stayed casually slumped across Iruka's couch, but something had changed in the atmosphere of the room, turning it cold and tense.  
  
Iruka never asked again.  
  
  


* * *

 

  
  
Their steady going momentum ultimately began to break apart completely after Naruto had come back to the village and events kept unfolding at a dizzling pace.  
  
Iruka hadn't seen Kakashi in over a month, when he suddenly appeared during the Pain invasion, stopping a stake aimed at Iruka's heart. Afterwards, Iruka felt as if the stake had hit true nonetheless when news arrived Kakashi was dead.  
  
Iruka gathered the very last scrapes of shinobi in him to stomp down on his feelings and just keep concentrating on trying to save other people, if not those he cared for the most. When his mind kept betraying him by reminding him of what he lost, he was suddenly grateful for the shinobi rules he had struggled with his whole life.  
  
By the time Naruto had come back on Kakashi's back, Iruka's mind had been so blank from the struggle to clamp down on his feelings that he was surprised at the sudden wetness on his cheeks and the smile that slipped on easily despite everything.  
  
When he came face to face with Kakashi amids the chaos of celebration and destruction around them, he was at a loss of words. But somewhere from the dull ache of the cauterized cavety that was his heart, he did pull some surprising honesty.  
  
"I'm glad you're back." _Not lost. Not dead._  
  
"Yes", was all Kakashi replied with one of his rare honest smiles, filled with both relief and regret.  
  


 

* * *

 

  
  
Iruka didn't meet Kakashi again until far after the war.  
  
He never got the chance to say _Take care_ , _Stay save_ , _I'm worried for you_ , _I love you_ and all the other bumbling thoughts on his mind during those turbulent times. But he also didn't get a chance, or the dreadful opportunity, to say goodbye.  
  
With time, all his conflicting emotions at the beginning of the war had calmed down. He had been scared to his very core, for both Naruto, for Kakashi, his students and his friends, for all the countless faces he encountered on a daily basis in the village, but in the end, he had lived. Survived. As had almost all people close to him as well. There still was mourning and an unshakeable sadness clinging to the air in the village right after everyone had returned home, but there had also been a fresh wind of hope steadily building up momentum since then.  
  
Konoha was being rebuild, shinobi were determined to make this new peace last, people reopened their businesses, daily live started up again and there was a brighter, surer glimpse of a peaceful and prospering future for his students at the horizont. Sasuke had returned to the village. And Kakashi had become Hokage.  
  
Iruka had found both a new fulfillment and a great distraction in going back to full-time work at the academy. The mission assignment system had been completely reorganized and upgraded into a matter handled between all great five shinobi villages. It involved a lot of bureaucracy and jounin like Shikamaru constantly travelling between villages.  
  
With the internal organization of the leaf itself changing and the transition between Kages, Iruka decided it was best if he kept to what had always been not only his primary job but also his true calling. Additionally, it kept him from having to face Kakashi.  
  
The more he was surprised when he suddenly received the invitation for a meeting with the new Hokage.  
  
Iruka couldn't for the hell of it figure out what Kakashi wanted to talk with him about. Puzzled, he went to the meeting - of course, an invitation from the Hokage meant it was an order - and stopped right in his tracks when he entered the room. Kakashi hadn't invited him to the main office but the more reclusive, personal suite next to it, which Sandaime had often used for his informal meetings with Iruka, playing Shogi together and drinking tea.  
  
It was exactly as he remembered it and he even imagined the slight scent of a lit pipe in the air. If not for the six written on the back of his robe, Iruka might have even had mistaken the figure gazing out of the windows, his back turned to Iruka but surely aware of his presence, for Sandaime.  
  
Iruka had to swallow around the lump in his throat.  
  
Kakashi turned and regarded him calmly, friendly even. He gestured to Iruka to take a seat at a small table, with tea prepared and a shogi board standing on it ready to be used. Iruka was torn between crying and hitting Kakashi with the stupid board right over his head.  
  
He settled for clenching his jaw and plopping down at the table. Balling his fists in his lap he waited until Kakashi had gracefully folded down opposite from him.  
  
"You're aware, that this can't be the same as what it used to be?" He bit out.  
  
"Yes", Kakashi said, with warm affection crinkling both his eyes.  
  


* * *

 

  
  
It wasn't until Naruto's wedding that the shoe finally dropped for Iruka.  
  
Seeing Naruto so happy with his bride, surrounded by friends and far away from the lonely and feared little boy he had been, made Iruka realize that even if his own apartment was cold and lonely from living alone all this time, it was so because he hadn't let anyone in to stay, not because of the lack of people in his life.  
  
When Kakashi came to stand beside him underneath the cherry trees, Iruka finally found the courage to ask.  
  
"Do you want to make this last?"  
  
"Yes", Kakashi simply said.  
  



End file.
